Results by themes
2012
Revitalising currently unattractive public spaces needs consideration on a broader scale than the immediate site environment. Even if these spaces are sometimes small in scale, they are strategic levers for activation on an urban level. Their impact in terms of identity and image often exceeds their physical limits and calls for a wider transformation of the existing fabric. Blind spots that have never had adequate use, or places whose initial functions are now obsolete or out of sync with the requirements of the inhabitants, can serve as platforms for activation and appropriation to mobilize the local population or a broader public. The development or redevelopment of these areas can be approached in many ways: in the form of refreshment by multifunctional spaces, with temporary or extendable structures acting as acupunctures, or as a trial balloon to put a site on the map, initiate private co-financing or investment and find new rhythms of intensity.
The contemporary city aims to anticipate the future and adapt to its unpredictable changes. Various strategies are currently being developed to achieve a creative resilience, in other words adapt to a changing environment. Working on Ecorhythms means basing urban development on a strong synergy between urban and natural environments in order to break with a principle of opposition that has separated city dwellers from natural realities and gradually undermined those realities.
This separation between the city-dweller and nature is not only spatial, but also temporal. Indeed, a landscape is not a pretty image but a living environment governed by cycles (seasons, day and night, tides, climate variations, flora and fauna) forces of growth, fast and slow movement, migration and transhumance, etc.
In contrast with modernist town planning, which reinforced a division between urban rhythms and nature, the remit – through the strong presence of landscape on the sites – is to encourage the introduction of operational processes based on the maintenance or regeneration of these Ecorhythms.
Sites are undergoing two kinds of closely related transformation: the first from a single large entity to a multitude of smaller parts; the other from a mono-functional entity to a mix of functions and uses.
Both transformations generate a greater degree of spatial and programmatical complexity, which is an essential quality of genuine urbanity.
In these transformations a system composed of smaller, separate and different elements is potentially more adaptable. If one part becomes redundant, it can await change or replacement without too great an impact on an area. If new needs arise, these can be more smoothly absorbed into a differentiated pattern of distribution. A fine urban mix is more adaptable than a large mono-functional cluster.
Heritage is generally thought to look back to the past, but conversely it could be said that it should look to the future. Heritage is usually considered to be extraordinary, but is there not a case for thinking about the definition of “ordinary heritage”? Heritage is customarily perceived as an architectural object, but this office will explore ways to “create heritage” in three types of context where it is in principle lacking: the transformation of orphan districts, the conversion of neglected buildings or plots, the redevelopment of abandoned industrial zones or enclaves.
It can be hypothesised that the more the city, in both its morphology and its functions, spans, recaptures and expresses the eras and phases of its development, the more it develops its capacity to adapt to change, its potential for urban adaptation and its ability to resist sudden crises. So the question is: does creating heritage mean increasing the capacity to adapt the future city?
Adaptability is about processes that offer creative possibilities for a project to incorporate uncertainty, lack of funding, the unknown future role of the competition site, or even long-term territorial transformations that affect the site.
So how can the “waiting period” before implementing a project be structured in such a way as to facilitate multiple scenarios, to involve numerous stakeholders, ultimately to allow changes to the initial vision? The intelligence of a project can depend on different processes that arise out of the dynamics of the site context. In other words, given time, a project can, so to speak, grow organically out of the site.
Some sites have expanded urban potential because of their connection with a larger entity. This entity might have a concrete physicality, such as a mobility infrastructure, or might be a virtual network of relationships between a number of urban nodes. Although the communities inhabiting or utilizing these sites may be small and apparently isolated, the connection with the network opens up possibilities for a richer urban life, for a new mix of different programmes and a more complex urbanity.
How can we prepare these territories to endure the different scenarios that might emerge on the other elements of the network or in the network itself? Should they be arranged in a way that makes it possible for them to adopt different roles within the network? How can they adapt to the possibility of major changes to the network, even its disappearance, through the definition of their own urban and architectural characteristics?